Intro to Social Stories: Helping People with Autism Understand the Neurotypical World

Social Stories are simple, structured and personalised stories that explain certain social situations, and how others think and feel in different situations. They help people with autism understand the contextual situation, hence allowing them to respond to it in ways that are effective for themselves and others.
This article explains the principles of Social Stories based on the Social Stories Criteria 10.3 and how to use them effectively. It’s a guide for anyone who wants to use this powerful communication tool to help people with autism in life.

Social Stories was developed by Carol Gray in the 1990s. Carol is an educational consultant in Michigan USA. She has worked with children with autism since 1976 to help them understand social contexts. This tool has become very popular globally amongst teachers, therapists, and families because it helps people with autism navigate the world around them.

Carol didn’t stop there. She also expanded her approach strategies to meet different abilities with “Social Articles” and “Comic Strip Conversations”. This has helped people with autism gain additional insights about social contexts. Since Carol continuously learns from her students, Social Stories have evolved with better sensitivity and nuance for better effectiveness. Over the years, this has also included working with both experts and autistic people.

Additionally, Carol provides guidelines and workshops for parents, teachers, and therapists to write Social Stories. You can connect with Carol through her online platform at Carol’s Club. Join the club for no fees and there are Social Story samples, articles and many more generous resources for you to learn from Carol, firsthand!

This article is written based on my attendance at a 2022 Social Story webinar with Carol Gray, and to date, there are already new updates! This article is not a training to write a Social Story but it is to give you an understanding of how a Social Story works.

Re-learning Social Stories

Social Stories have been the common go-to strategic tool for autistics in classrooms and therapy settings for many years. You might have been writing and using Social Stories, learning from your Therapist or using one that a Therapist has provided for you. However, you might have been using an older method of writing them as much has changed and important improvements have been made over time. As a familiar and widely used tool, staying up-to-date on best practices is important to ensure their effectiveness, and to prevent creating unnecessary anxiety for the autistic individuals for whom they are written. Yes, it is important to write it right!

Social Stories is recognising that every human experience and perspective is unique and valid, and that social impairments and their solutions are shared. Social Stories are a process that results in a Story or an alternate solution. Each Social Story accurately describes a personally relevant topic (often a context, skill) for the audience of the Story, a child, adolescent, or adult. (Carol Gray, 2024).

Social Stories:

  • Support caregivers (Authors) by structuring their efforts to gather information and meaningfully share information with those in their care.
  • Identify and describe relevant information that may have been missed or misunderstood by your child (Audience).
  • Is a process for you in understanding your child’s unique experience and perspective, dropping your judgement, and then understanding the social impairment. The outcome is to provide a solution through a story.
  • Can be a story, or in alternative forms that communicates easily with your child – such as comics, drawings, printed books, on google slides or even a recorded auditory story. As long as it meets your child’s communication needs.
  • Is personal and individualised for each child.
    • Can be useful to describe a situation to your child, who can be a child, an adolescent, or adult.

Social Stories are not:

  • to make a person behave in a specific manner.
  • a rulebook to make a person behave in a certain way or to feel in a certain way that the author desires.
  • supposed to function as a rulebook.
  • an instruction book.
  • a “promise” book.Whether you are a new or a seasoned user of Social Stories, we will share the latest guidelines and criteria for writing an effective Social Story below.

Whether you are a new or a seasoned user of Social Stories, we will share the latest guidelines and criteria for writing an effective Social Story below

Writing a Social Story

Step A Let’s check the situation!

Step B Research and Gather Information

You will have to gather more information first to know what to write about. We encourage you to be curious, drop your expectations as parents, and do this step as if this is the first time you’re learning about your child. Remind yourself that your child’s experience and the way your child makes sense of things/situations can be very different from ours. And that’s all right.

Having the target situation in mind, please use these few questions to guide your investigation:

Has my child experienced this situation before? Does this situation happen in other situations/places? How does my child think about or see this situation? What are others’ experiences?
Investigate whether this situation is something new or unfamiliar for your child. Or it can be something that is not new, but probably your child has realised only recently

Investigate whether this situation is specifically about a person, the situation or both.

Does your child have the same response in other similar locations, or only in this specific location?

Ask your child! Use the communication method you normally share with your child – body language, AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication), simple words, or any normal way as long as it helps you communicate with your child effectively. Ask with curiosity.

Try to be in your child’s shoes and see it from your child’s perspective.

Be curious about the others involved in the specific situations and their experiences with your child.

The more information you gather from other perspectives, the easier it will be to identify the missing piece!
Has my child experienced this situation before? Does this situation happen in other situations/places? How does my child think about or see this situation? What are others’ experiences?
Investigate whether this situation is something new or unfamiliar for your child. Or it can be something that is not new, but probably your child has realised only recently

Investigate whether this situation is specifically about a person, the situation or both.

Does your child have the same response in other similar locations, or only in this specific location?

Ask your child! Use the communication method you normally share with your child – body language, AAC (Augmentative and

Alternative Communication), simple words, or any normal way as long as it helps you communicate with your child effectively. Ask with curiosity.

Try to be in your child’s shoes and see it from your child’s perspective.

Be curious about the others involved in the specific situations and their experiences with your child.

The more information you gather from other perspectives, the easier it will be to identify the missing piece!

Step C Analyse!

Once enough information is gathered, let’s analyse!

  1. Analyse what my child thinks vs what others think.
    • First, use your child’s processing method and logic to look at the information. Try to use your child’s point of view.
    • Then use your way of looking at the situation.
    • After that, use the logic of others that is related (e.g. class teacher, classmates, people in that restaurant etc.).
    • Then try to identify the gap and the information that your child missed.
    • You will realise that your child might see the situation differently from you and others. If you can identify that, great! We should always acknowledge and respect the differences.
  2. Analyse the place and group of people.
    • It is important to remember that social expectations at home will be different from expectations in other places, for example, the tone of voice to speak in a kopitiam will be different compared with if one is in a place of worship.
    • So let’s realise how expectations can change according to location and situation. At times we are so used to these hidden rules, that we might have taken it for granted. But it can be something that your child is unaware of.
    • Now check and see whether your child is aware of it.
    • This will help us to decide whether to include explanations about different places and people and the commonlypractised expectations.
  3. After analysing, let’s list all the information you think your child missed and hasn’t learned yet.
  4. Then choose one that is most related to this specific situation. Focus on ONE topic per Social Story.
  5. Keep the others for more Social Stories. You can have a series of Social Stories for a situation but keep to one goal, one story.

Step D Let’s draft. The Guidelines

Carol Gray suggests always starting with a draft, and editing as we go. Here are the guidelines to develop your draft.
Social stories should be personalised

Remember to tailor it to your child! Use the ‘language’ your child understands best so that the Social Story brings meaning to your child. This is a reminder that Social Story is not a book to teach grammar or language, so do not try to include new vocabulary to teach new words! Only introduce the phrase to focus on in this Social Story.

Think about how your child learns best and use that way of comprehension to explain things to them. There’s no specific language to use, it can be in Mandarin, in Bahasa Malaysia, or even in a comic drawing – as long as it is your child’s familiar language and easy to understand!

Six Questions Guide

Use the WH questions: Where, When, Who, What, How and Why, to guide you to write the story by answering it according to the situation.

Use the right tense

Use the right past, present or future tense in your language! If you are using another language, remember to include the sense of time too if your story needs that.

Accurate information

Be accurate with the meaning when describing the situation and the topic that you want to explain. Our children appreciate clarity and accuracy in the information provided for them.

Do not use ‘You’!

Use first-person or third-person perspective statements for example: write from the point of view of a person (“I” or “we”) or the point of view of someone else (“he,” “she,” “they,” or a name).

Use a suitable tone

Write in a positive and patient tone to explain the topic you would like your child to understand. You can write as if you are writing a documentary at your child’s level of understanding.

Remember Social Stories are to describe, not to correct your child or highlight your child’s mistake! Try to shift from being a mother / father to a mentor when writing a Social Story.

Also, highlight what has been done well, and celebrate it in your Social Story!

Write in Three Parts
Introduction

  • Introduce the topic phrase to talk about in this story, provide one definition and stick to the definition! This will be mentioned throughout the story.
  • This can be a commonly used phrase, or you can create one that makes sense to your child.
  • For example: Meal is a human fuel – food that we eat during mealtime provides energy and nutrients for us, to move, walk, talk, learn and interact. Meals are like fuel for a human, just like petrol for cars.Body

Body

  • Here is where the details are being explained with more relevant information, regarding the topic.

Conclusion

  • Summarise the story referring to the topic sentence.
Use Two Types of Sentences
(1)Describe to explain the situation.

Describe the fact as it is. NOT what you want your child to think it is.

For example:

DO: The seatbelt in the car is to protect the passenger’s safety when the car is in use.
DON’T: You must wear your seatbelt all the time so that you won’t be killed in a car accident.

(2)Perspective – explain how others think of the same matter.

Explain the perspective of the majority of people regarding this matter. It can also provide a variety of perspectives, for our children to realise the broader view. But remember we are informing, for our children to realise, but not asking our children to think the same.

Examples:

  • Some people choose to wear their seatbelt once the vehicle is turned on.
  • Some people choose to wear their seatbelt only when the vehicle is moving.
  • Some people added a pad to their seatbelt to make it more comfortable.

Inform the specific behaviours that are expected in the situation by using Coaching sentences. This is optional and if you do, keep it to only one. Even none is alright, depending on the topic and your child! Coach your child on something achievable, and that your child has done before. Do not trigger unnecessary uncertainties! At times, some children take it as a goal to achieve as it’s being written down in the Social Story. It is stressful if a child fails to achieve it.

DON’T: Put on the seatbelt all the time to make car rides fun and safe!
What if I put on a seatbelt but I am not having a fun ride, did I do anything wrong

Remember, a Social Story is to describe more than direct! The goal is to help your child feel more confident and prepared, not to make them feel overwhelmed!

Also, keep sentences short and meaningful – no commas!

One Title

Keep to one topic per book, and write the title last!

Review and edit!

Write everything down, simplify, edit!
Read again, and edit further, until you are confident it can be understood by your child and meets the criteria.

Implementing a Social Story

Writing is the first step, next, let’s learn to deliver this story to your child.

Introduce
Introduce the Social Story to your child when your child is ready to learn and engage with you. It is also important that you are in the ready-to-guide mode so that you can be in a mentor mode with the right mood! Read the Social Story in a neutral tone. Read it like a storybook!

DO NOT:

  • Use Social Story to ‘teach’ your child.
  • Force a Social Story on your child.
  • Read it right after you have disciplined your child about the situation that the social story is explaining.
  • Read it in the tone of “See, I told you about it…”.
Support Plan

Always remember that a Social Story is not a magic book. Your child needs to connect with what has been explained in the Social Story to the actual situation. Give them guidance as necessary to be able to relate.

Visual strategies can be used in the situation to help your child relate to it, such as a sticky note or poster with the topic phrase on it to be placed in the situation. If your child uses a tablet or iPad, using a location reminder with a picture of the Social Story popping up, can be helpful as a timely guide too.

Review Plan

Once a Social Story of a specific topic is introduced, you can repeat the exercise by reading it together again on a regular frequency, more frequently at first and then gradually spacing out the time.

Do share your observation of your child’s response to the situation the last few days, and celebrate it with your child and family! Acknowledge the effort of adjustment and encourage your child! If your child has adopted the new habit, and it seems like a “problem solved” for you, still, do read it again and celebrate the change with your child! Let’s not take the effort for granted!

There might be some questions that your child might have about the situation that you can address too.

Again, DO NOT read the Social Story with a “I told you so!” or “What did the Social Story say?” tone, in situations where the child did not show their adjustment to the situation.

Social Story on Tour!

One Social Story can be made into copies, and be given to other adults who are involved (in the situation) to read it for the child too. This helps the child to generalise more easily and understand that this explanation applies to all these people too.

For example, if it is a Social Story about putting on a seat belt, a copy can be given to each parent who drives a different car, the aunt who might be fetching your child, the personal driver or the Bas Sekolah driver.

Social Story Samples

There are plenty of Social Stories written by Carol Gray herself that are being generously shared on her website Social Story Sampler – Carol Gray. There are also more resources available if you sign in to be part of Carol’s Club, which does not require fees.

Conclusion

One important takeaway from learning Social Stories with Carol Gray is that with all the techniques and criteria of writing a Social Story, always remember that the intention to support should be from the child, for the child. Writing a Social Story is an opportunity for us as parents to learn about our child again. We can view perspectives through our child’s lens, learning something new about our child again, and observing the growth of their perspectives, whilst learning to respect the differences between us and our child.

References

Author bio

This article was written by Ms Lee Yu Ying and reviewed by Ms Carol Gray, the developer of Social Stories.

Ms Lee Yu Ying, is a Behaviour Analyst and Social Coach, Co-Founder of Shining Star Learning Hub, Kuala Lumpur. Yu Ying is a passionate advocate for individuals, parents, and families navigating Autism, ADHD and Down syndrome. As a certified Behaviour Analyst, MindfulGym Trainer and co-founder of Shining Star Learning Hub, she combines her experience in working with families, ABA and mindfulness practices to empower individuals and families through skill-building, emotional regulation, and creating supportive environments for growth and development.